Tiziana Lanciano

Background: Employee well-being is increasingly understood as the result of the interaction between individual vulnerabilities and organizational resources. However, limited evidence has examined how employees’ emotion regulation difficulties, workplace bullying, and leaders’ emotional intelligence (EI) jointly contribute to psychological well-being within a multilevel organizational context. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory, this study conceptualizes emotion regulation difficulties as indicators of deficits in personal emotional resources, workplace bullying as a psychosocial job demand, and leaders’ EI as a team-level organizational resource. Methods: A multilevel design was adopted involving 287 employees nested within 41 work teams of an Italian communication company. Employees completed measures of emotion regulation difficulties, workplace bullying, and psychological well-being (level 1), whereas team leaders (level 2) completed the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). Random-intercept multilevel models were estimated to examine direct and cross-level relationships. Results: Greater emotion regulation difficulties and higher exposure to workplace bullying were associated with poorer psychological well-being. Although leaders’ EI showed limited direct effects on well-being, specific emotional abilities—particularly understanding emotions —buffered the negative association between workplace bullying and psychological well-being. These findings suggest that emotionally intelligent leaders can provide a supportive interpersonal context that mitigates the impact of employees’ emotional vulnerabilities. Conclusions: The findings support a multilevel JD-R perspective in which employee well-being emerges from the interaction between deficits in personal emotional resources, psychosocial job demands, and organizational resources. By providing partial evidence for the buffering role of specific leader EI abilities, this study extends current knowledge on emotionally intelligent leadership and highlights its value for promoting psychologically healthy and sustainable workplaces.

Background: Employee well-being is increasingly understood as the result of the inter-action between individual vulnerabilities and organizational resources. However, limited evidence has examined how employees’ emotion regulation difficulties, workplace bullying, and leaders’ emotional intelligence (EI) jointly contribute to psychological well-being within a multilevel organizational context. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory, this study conceptualizes emotion regulation difficulties as indicators of deficits in personal emotional resources, workplace bullying as a psycho-social job demand, and leaders’ EI as a team-level organizational resource. Methods: A multilevel design was adopted involving 287 employees nested within 41 work teams of an Italian communication company. Employees completed measures of emotion regulation difficulties, workplace bullying, and psychological well-being (level 1), whereas team leaders (level 2) completed the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). Random-intercept multilevel models were estimated to examine direct and cross-level relationships. Results: Greater emotion regulation difficulties and higher exposure to workplace bullying were associated with poorer psychological well-being. Although leaders’ EI showed limited direct effects on well-being, specific emotional abilities—particularly understanding emotions —buffered the negative association between workplace bullying and psychological well-being. These findings suggest that emotionally intelligent leaders can provide a supportive interpersonal context that mitigates the impact of employees’ emotional vulnerabilities. Conclusions: The findings support a multilevel JD-R perspective in which employee well-being emerges from the interaction between deficits in personal emotional re-sources, psychosocial job demands, and organizational resources. By providing partial evidence for the buffering role of specific leader EI abilities, this study extends current knowledge on emotionally intelligent leadership and highlights its value for promoting psychologically healthy and sustainable workplaces.

Interpersonal synchronization represents a core dimension of supportive dyads, with a growing body of evidence demonstrating its role in fostering a positive, cooperative, and effective bond. This connection may be detected through measurable patterns of alignment in autonomic responses during interaction, leading to client change and cooperation with the clinician. Recent advances in wearable technology offer new opportunities for monitoring such physiological processes in real-world clinical settings; however, few studies have analysed synchronization via wearable devices across multiple sessions in supportive settings, such as university counseling services. The present study investigated physiological synchronization processes within 44 student-counselor dyads in a brief university counseling setting and explored their association with therapeutic alliance and clinical change. Multi-channel physiological data, specifically heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA), were continuously recorded using non-invasive wristbands (Empatica E4) during the first, third, and fifth sessions. Synchronization processes were evaluated by integrating explicit self-report measures (assessing emotion regulation, therapeutic alliance, clinical symptoms, and general psychological well-being) with a set of physiological synchrony indices capturing coordination, alignment, and directionality. Physiological metrics captured across the three sessions were used to predict self-reported scores on the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Revised (WAI-SR), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE-10), and the Psychological General Wellbeing Index (PGWBI). Analyses revealed that cardiac coordination - but not electrodermal activity - progressed alongside the development of the working alliance, whereas the remaining outcomes, despite showing overall clinical improvement across sessions, did not exhibit systematic convergence with the physiological metrics.

Volcanic risk management frequently encounters a significant gap between Probabilistic Volcanic Hazard Assessment and subjective risk perception. This study addresses this issue by comparing communities exposed to tephra fallout from two contrasting volcanoes in Southern Italy: the persistently active Etna and the quiescent Vesuvius. A survey of residents in proximal (high exposure: Catania, Nola) and distal (lower exposure: Siracusa, Pisticci) zones assessed hazard knowledge, multidimensional risk perception, institutional trust, and preparedness. The results identify distinct socio-cognitive paradigms. In the Etna proximal zone, chronic exposure results in hazard normalization. Residents perceive a high probability of tephra fallout but dissociate this from personal threat, relying on individual coping strategies and disengaging from institutional preparedness. In the Vesuvius proximal and Etna distal zones, a preparedness paradox emerges: high theoretical awareness and willingness to adopt protective actions coexist with low practical readiness due to insufficient hazard-specific training. Geographical distance further differentiates perception. The Etna distal area maintains realistic awareness due to frequent volcanic activity, whereas the Vesuvius distal area (Pisticci) exhibits a distal shadow effect, where distance significantly reduces risk salience despite objective transboundary threats. Although trust in scientists and the Civil Protection Agency remains consistently high, sources of hazard knowledge vary considerably across communities. These results suggest that Disaster Risk Reduction strategies should move beyond uniform approaches. Risk communication should be context-specific, aiming to disrupt habituation in chronically exposed communities and to transform abstract concern into actionable preparedness in quiescent and distal regions.

Introduction: The COVID‐19 pandemic has heightened concerns about malingering, particularly given its recognition as an occupational disease in several regions. This study evaluated the applicability of the Verifiability Approach (VA), a credibility assessment tool based on the principle that liars provide fewer verifiable details than truth tellers, to distinguish between honest reporters and malingerers of COVID‐19 infection. Methods: A total of 410 participants (51.5% female) completed an online survey via Google Forms. Participants who reported previous COVID‐19 infection ( n = 205) were assigned to either an informed honest ( n = 104) or not‐informed honest ( n = 101) group, while those without prior infection ( n = 205) were assigned to informed malingerers ( n = 105) or not‐informed malingerers ( n = 100) conditions. Participants in the informed condition were briefed about the VA before writing their reports. Results: Informed honest participants provided significantly more verifiable details than both uninformed honest participants and malingerers. The number of verifiable details and the ratio of verifiable details to total details were strongly associated with honesty when participants were informed about the VA, indicating that the information Protocol enhanced diagnostic accuracy. Perceived success was higher among honest participants, particularly those informed about the VA. No significant effects emerged for reported long COVID or fabricated symptoms, likely due to limited variability and low symptom familiarity. Conclusion: The findings support the VA's validity in distinguishing genuine from feigned symptom reports in health‐related contexts. However, the fully online design, lack of factual verification, and potential for misreporting represent key limitations. Future studies should replicate these results in face‐to‐face or ecologically valid settings and extend the VA framework to the study of symptom dissimulation.

Being exposed to a traumatic event can engender repetitive, distressing, and interfering memories, also called intrusive memories. In addition, over time, people sometimes recall additional and new details of the traumatic experience. In the current study, we examined whether people could report intrusive memories for false details of a traumatic event. Participants ( N = 39) completed nine study sessions. In the first session, they watched a video of a traumatic event (i.e., sexual assault) and performed a recognition task. From the second session to the eighth session, each day, participants reported their intrusive memories for the event by replying to some questions related to true and false event‐related details. In the final session, we asked them to complete again the same recognition task from the first session. People reported having intrusive memories for false event‐related details. These memories did not statistically differ in terms of vividness and distress as compared with intrusive memories for true details. However, overall, the reporting of both intrusive memories for true and false details decreased over time and did not influence the voluntary recall of the traumatic event. These findings are important for theoretical insights on the phenomenon of intrusive memories and the memory amplification effect.

Incidental emotions, unrelated to the decision at hand, can significantly influence judgments and choices. The aim of the current study is to investigate the role of the trait and state emotions—specifically anger and guilt—in affecting evaluative judgments. A sample of 204 male participants was randomly assigned to one of the three induced-state emotion conditions (anger, guilt, or neutral). Participants read a forensic report describing an argument that ended with the offender’s decision to violently strike the opponent. The participants were asked to identify with the offender as much as possible and to judge the immoral and risky choice in terms of causality, responsibility, predictability, intentionality, severity, counterfactual thoughts, reversibility willingness, and anticipated emotions. Results showed that trait anger was linked to external causal attribution, judgment of others’ responsibility, and anticipated negative and positive emotions, while state anger was associated with less internal attribution and fewer upward counterfactual thoughts. Trait guilt was linked to a desire to reverse one’s decision and anticipated moral emotions, while state guilt correlated with internal attribution and judgments of severity. No interaction between trait and state emotions was found. These findings deepen our understanding of the role of incidental emotions in judgment and decision-making.

Research on malingering shows that symptom overreporting is more frequent when financial compensation is involved, particularly in whiplash cases where symptoms are subjective and difficult to verify. Individuals motivated by gain often score higher on symptom validity tests, suggesting that they may intentionally exaggerate symptoms for insurance or legal purposes. To investigate this phenomenon, we administered the Italian version of the Self-Report Symptom Inventory (SRSI-It) to 594 participants (65.8% women), randomly assigned to one of three instructional conditions: (1) Simulators with Compensation (n = 185), instructed to feign whiplash symptoms for financial gain; (2) Pure Simulators (n = 183), asked to simulate without monetary incentive; and (3) Honest Respondents (n = 226), instructed to respond truthfully. Results showed that compensation simulators reported significantly more pseudosymptoms and genuine symptoms than honest participants, supporting the role of financial incentives in amplifying symptom overreporting. Pure simulators also exaggerated symptoms, but to a lesser degree. The ratio of pseudosymptoms to genuine symptoms distinguished simulators from honest respondents, although it did not differ significantly between the two simulator groups. These findings underscore the influence of external incentives on symptom presentation and support the utility of the SRSI-It in detecting feigning. However, high false positive rates raise concerns about cutoff specificity, warranting further validation.